Global diversification of financial institutions, including the insurance sector, has proven beneficial to many economies by providing them with increasing capital flow, higher competition, and introduction of newer technologies and distribution channels. This paper aims to critically evaluate...

The Guaranteed Minimum Maturity Benefit is quite a popular feature embedded in several unit-linked policies offered by insurance companies. The value of this benefit depends on several processes assumed to describe both the mortality and the financial dynamics, typically represented by interest...

Between 2016 and 2022, life insurers in several European countries experienced negative longterm interest rates, which put pressure on their business models. The aim of this paper is to empirically investigate the impact of negative interest rates on the stock performance of life insurers. To...

Dynamic hybrid products emerged in 2007 and are now well established in the German life insurance market. In this article, we study interaction effects between dynamic hybrid products and traditional deferred annuity contracts, that are sold by the same insurance company. The key question we...

Motivated by a recent demographic study establishing a link between macroeconomic fluctuations and the mortality index kt in the Lee-Carter model, we assess the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on the solvency of a life insurance company. Liabilities in our stochastic simulation framework...

This paper examines a change in the level of competition in the Japanese life insurance industry over the last 17 years. We estimate the first order condition for profit-maximizing insurance oligopolies to obtain the degree of non-competition and collusion. Estimation results suggest that: 1)...

Rather than taking on more risk, US insurers hit hard by the crisis pulled back from risk taking, relative to insurers hit less hard by the crisis. Capital requirements alone do not explain this risk reduction: insurers hit hard reduced risk within assets with identical regulatory treatment....

In Deutschland, aber auch im Euroraum hat die historisch beispiellose expansive Geldpolitik der Europäischen Zentralbank den rückläufigen Zinstrend beschleunigt und zu einem ausgeprägten Niedrigzinsumfeld geführt. Mittlerweile gehen von der Geldpolitik aber kaum noch realwirtschaftliche...

Market risks account for an integral part of life insurers' risk profiles. This paper explores the market risk sensitivities of insurers in two large life insurance markets, namely the U.S. and Europe. Based on panel regression models and daily market data from 2012 to 2018, we analyze the...

Annuities are perceived as being illiquid financial instruments, and this has limited their attractiveness to consumers and their inclusion in financial models. However, short positions in annuities can be replicated using life insurance and debt, permitting long positions in annuities to be...